The Final Version?

Yes, yes, yes. I'm still alive! My hiatus has no good excuse, and "script sell" detox is going well.

I've dedicated myself to reading more scripts now-a-days, and spent some time just this afternoon reading a draft of "Chronicles of Narnia."

I noted a handful of sections in the draft I downloaded from Daily Script that differed from the final movie. One scene in particular where Lucy shares tea with Mr. Tumnus and he eventually reveals he is trying to kidnap her. On the one hand I felt the movie did well to take the "kidnap" reference out because it immediately shifts the relationship of Lucy and Tumnus to a place I don't think it could recover as well from. But on the other hand the draft scene did a better job of concisely relating the danger that Lucy was in from the White Witch.

Discovering a couple of these better "draft" scenes solidified in my mind the quote from William Goldman where he says the "the single most important fact, perhaps, of the entire movie industry" is that 'nobody knows anything.'

What I know is that I'm dedicating what little spare time I have for the next little while to reading script after script, and I hope through a bit of osmosis that my own ability to judge what scenes should be left in or out will sharpen.

ICK...SICK

Have been under the weather for what feels like a week. Kids have it too! Luckily Heather hasn't gotten it. She's keeping the boat afloat right now.

Nothing new to report. Work is good. Keeping me very busy.

Attended the memorial service of a friend this last weekend. 32 years old. Very, very sad and untimely passing. I knew Dave in high school and a little through college. He was a great guy. Always a smile on his face. You couldn't help but love him. I hadn't seen him in years, and apparently he had suffered some health issues and had flown to Cleveland for a surgery to fix stuff. He never woke from the surgery. God give his wife and extended family peace in a very difficult time. David J. Andrew was a great man. See you in Heaven someday, bro.

Doing a little graphic work tonight as a favor for a family member.

NEED TO WRITE MORE!!

I'm hoping after a weekend of R&R I'll be back on track and ready to kick my rear in gear.

To Partner or Not Partner?

Talked to an old friend of mine yesterday. One of my best friends, we've known each other since the 6th grade. We started the same new school that year, and from then on people always got us confused for each other. Our paths split and merged a couple times during the next ten years, and it's cool that we are still friends after all these years.

Kevin is like a kindred spirit. He has the same quirky, dorky sense of humor. He has the same entrepreneurial spirit about him. Matter of fact, a few years ago we briefly started a business together that turned out to be a great idea, just a decade or so too early.

I hadn't talked to Kevin in a while, and catching up I found that he's still got a fire burning inside him to run his own business, be his own boss, do his own thing. During a recent business trip for his day job, he had lunched with a very, VERY successful business man to try to gain his business. Kevin asked the guy how he started his business and the guy said it was basically him and a friend and they just got along so good together they felt like they had to find a way to do something together. Lucky for them after many years of hard work it's made its way into a $70M business.

Kevin and I are like brothers. When we get together, we are instantly taken back to 6th grade. Matter of fact, when attending college together, numerous times we walked the line of getting throw out of class by our professors because we just couldn't settle down. Lucky for us there were just as many times when we would put our energies to creative mastery, as to professorial torture. They loved to hate us, or hated to love us. Sometimes both.

So Kevin throws out that it might be interesting for us to try and start a business again. Kinda like picking up where we left off, only a few years later. But I had to be honest, so I told him I just wasn't in that space anymore. I've seen the sacrifice/money it takes to cultivate a good idea into a profitable company, and I'm just not ready to make that sacrifice or incur that cost.

What did pop in my mind though, was how great Kevin and I would be writing together. Kevin and my imaginations, when combined, could be described as Farrelly Brothers or Wayans Brothers'ish. We're silly. Just plain goofy. And we snowball off each other like crazy.

But Kevin wasn't so sure about it. He used to write in high school. And he was a very imaginative writer. But he hasn't written since. And as he himself said, "if you don't use a gift, you lose it, and I think I've lost that ability."

To be even more honest, I'm not sure if I'd want a partner. I know one of the pros is that you stick to a schedule and you have someone pushing you and all that. But the con of creative differences and scheduling around someone else might not be very fun.

Anyone out there have an experience with working a partner? Pros, cons?

I'd have to sell him on investing his time in a new arena he's never considered before. (ie. scriptwriting) But I think if he bought in we could write something special together, even if it was us brainstorming together and me going and writing it.

Anniversary Surprise

One of the things I love the most is to plan a good surprise. Birthday, Christmas, Anniversaries....all prime suspects. Well, 9/30 was my wife and my 6th anniversary, so it gave me another chance to plan something fun.

We usually take off for the weekend and hit the Oregon Coast, but lately we've been feeling that we should get a little more "outdoorsy," so that as our kids get a little older they get an appreciation for nature.

Living here in Vancouver, Washington it's pretty shocking that I've never been to see Mount St. Helens. I mean, she blasted away when I was ten, and I vividly remember where I was, and she's only about 90 minutes away from me. But the opportunity never came up, so I've never gone.

Over the last year or so my wife has mentioned a couple times that we should go, so when it came time to start planning, I definitely had the "where" covered. I just needed to figure out the little details.

My wife is also a huge fan of "Little House on the Prairie." She owns every book and knows just a little bit too much about Laura Ingalls Wilder to creep me out.

With such a love for that era, I figured "why not hook us up with a log cabin." I found a great little campsite called Eco Park and reserved a cabin.

Activities were easy to plan as the highway that leads to St. Helens has at least four visitor centers, and the campground had plenty of trails to hike and such.

We were pleased to find out when we arrived at the Mount St. Helens Silver Lake Visitor's Center that it was National Park Appreciation Day and entrance fees at all the observatory/visitor centers were waived. SWEET...I like free stuff.

Anywho...I'm already rambling.

The net result is the cabin was great. Log cabin with propane heat and lights (just like the olden days, right?!).

The campgrounds were frequented by elk, a point we figured quickly as we hiked around and discovered elk poo everywhere (as my son points out in the picture). On a hike we were lucky enough to spot a herd of about a dozen down a ridge in an open area. It was surreal to watch them watch us. Late, late that night we could hear them "bugeling" to each other. We also heard a coyote, which tends to wake you up a bit.

The surprise went over well, as I packed EVERYTHING and didn't tell my wife where we were headed. I told her I had to pee when we got to our exit, and she bought it until I wasn't looking for somewhere to pull over and she spotted a Mount St. Helens sign and got a huge smile on her face.

Trip was fun. The mountain was VERY impressive. Our sun caught a movie of the eruption at the first visitor's center, and was a little disconcerted when we got to the mountain and found the lava dome smoking. He goes "uh, oh." It was classic.

The surprise was a success. We had a great time. We didn't sleep well, but saw and did some wonderful things.

Let's Make This Official

So a couple posts ago I mentioned that my wife had given me a great example of fortitude as she was able to complete something she had been working on for a very long time.

My wife began working on her Master's degree about 7 years ago, and even lost a year's worth of credits when she moved down to Vancouver and transferred to City University. She worked her classes all the way down to her final project, but hit a "snag" when she got pregnant with our first son and inevitably lost motivation to finish that project when he was born.

That last project has essentially floated out there all this time, with my wife picking it back up only to let it go again around the time of our daughter's birth. It was really only through persistence, and the help of a mentor from the University, that she was able to pick things up again recently and push it all the way through to completion!

It was priceless to see the ear-to-ear smile on her face as I opened the envelope and read the words "Master's Degree in Education with Presidential Honors." My wife knew she had a 4.0 GPA for quite a while, but didn't realize she had finished up with her grades high enough to qualify for honors.

For all of us out there who have started something and are struggling to complete it, take the example of someone who stuck with something for six years and finally completed it as inspiration.